Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray.14.2.1876

Main articles: History of the telephone and Timeline of the telephone
Further information: Invention of the telephone, Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy, and Canadian Parliamentary Motion on Alexander Graham Bell

Credit for the invention of the electric telephone is frequently
disputed, and new controversies over the issue have arisen from time to
time. As with other influential inventions
such as radio, television, the light bulb, and the computer, there were
several inventors who did pioneering experimental work on voice transmission over a wire and improved on each other's ideas. Innocenzo Manzetti, Antonio Meucci, Johann Philipp Reis, Elisha Gray, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison,
among others, have all been credited with pioneering work on the
telephone. An undisputed fact is that Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be awarded a patent for the electric telephone by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in March 1876. That first patent by Bell was the master patent of the telephone, from which other patents for electric telephone devices and features flowed.

The early history of the telephone became and still remains a
confusing morass of claims and counterclaims, which were not clarified
by the large number of lawsuits that hoped to resolve the patent claims
of many individuals and commercial competitors. The Bell and Edison
patents, however, were forensically victorious and commercially
decisive.

A Hungarian engineer, Tivadar Puskás, quickly invented the telephone switchboard in 1876, which allowed for the formation of telephone exchanges, and eventually networks.